This week, we saw a transition of power in the United States and immediately saw the role of power in both the outgoing and incoming Presidents. As we always see in a transitional time, many of us feel uneasy with how the new leader is likely to wield their influence.
The story of the plagues, which start in this week’s portion Va’era, is an insight into what happens when power is used as a means, and what happens when it is seen as an end.
We know the story of the plagues through our Pesach story and the usual trope of each successive calamity – God tells Moses what the plague will be, Moses tells Pharaoh what will happen, the plague comes, Pharaoh relents, the plague disappears, and Pharaoh’s heart hardens. Many people have noted the question of just how much free will Pharaoh has, but when it comes to the question of power, I was struck by the actions of the Egyptian magicians in the first two plagues.
First, God tells Moses to tell Pharaoh that he will turn the Nile into blood. The river was the lifeblood of Egyptian society, so making it unusable would be a tremendous blow to Pharaoh and his courtiers. “The Nile stank so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile; and there was blood throughout the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 7:21) Yet in the next verse, we see that the Egyptian leaders aren’t sad or shocked that their water source had disappeared; instead, “But when the Egyptian magician-priests did the same with their spells, Pharaoh’s heart stiffened and he did not heed them—as had spoken.” (7:22)
Then, after the Nile returns to its normal state, God tells Moses that frogs will swarm all over the land. “Aaron held out his arm over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt.” (8:2) And again, rather than feeling abashed, “[T]he magician-priests did the same with their spells, and brought frogs upon the land of Egypt.” (8:3)
As Pharaoh’s magicians show off their power by repeating what Moses and Aaron do, they end up harming the Egyptians themselves. “Oh, you can turn the Nile into blood and prevent anyone from drinking? Hah! Look — so can we!” “You can bring frogs onto the land of Egypt? We’ll do it, too, and bring more plagues onto ourselves!”
All of the characters in these stories showcase power – God, Moses, and Aaron on one side, and Pharaoh and the Egyptian priests on the other. But their goals are quite different. While God and the Israelites are striving to use power to be free, Pharaoh and his magicians are using power for its own sake. And that’s the key difference.
Power is crucial in our lives and in our society. It’s how we change laws, fight for more rights, and actually leave an impact on the world. Yet as Professor Dacher Keltner notes, there’s a paradox – the more power we are able to wield, the more disconnected we become to those we are actually trying to help.
Power is given to those individuals, groups, or nations who advance the interests of the greater good in socially-intelligent fashion.
Yet unfortunately, having power renders many individuals as impulsive and poorly attuned to others as your garden-variety frontal lobe patient, making them prone to act abusively and lose the esteem of their peers. What people want from leaders—social intelligence—is what is damaged by the experience of power.
- While it is not precisely true that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” it can be very easy to focus on the power itself rather than on the way it is wielded. Not only that, the more power we gain, the more likely we are to forget that its role is to help those we serve. As Esau McCaulley writes in The Atlantic:
“…[W]hen a member of the clergy is given the honor of praying in front of a leader, the prayer should not merely evoke a kind of divine mandate but remind the leader of his solemn responsibility. We serve those in power well when we help them remember there is someone to whom they must give an account. A good prayer for a person in power ought to leave them with knees trembling rather than head nodding.”
The Egyptian magicians became enamored with power, and ultimately destroyed their own people, bringing more blood and frogs. But power can also be a source of great good when it’s used in service of something higher, as Moses and Aaron showed, striving to free the Israelites.
We may not be the ones personally leading our country, but we can exert influence on our leaders and strive to make sure that their power is used for the betterment of our society. That’s something we all have the power to do.

Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that bridges the scientific and religious worlds and is being incubated at Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and served as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester. In addition to My Jewish Learning, he’s written for The Huffington Post, Science and Religion Today, and WordPress.com. He lives in Westchester with his wife, Heather Stoltz, a fiber artist, and their daughter and son.